JoachimSep 20, 2024

I‘m happy and sad at the same time to announce that after 4 years I’m leaving Apple (and the US) in 3 weeks.

Working on developer tools at Apple was a dream come true. I met lots of great people at Apple and really enjoyed working with them and I’m grateful that I was able to help ship some improvements to „our“ tools.

But I severely overestimated Apple‘s flexibility and ability to adapt to a changed world of how work is done nowadays.

Yes, I’m leaving because of Apple‘s #remotework policy.

Show threadDominic HoptonSep 20, 2024
@cocoafrog I’m curious which came first: the desire to relocate or the frustration with rigid policy?
Show threadJoachimSep 20, 2024
@grork from the beginning , my plan was to work from Germany. I joined in 2020 in Germany and worked from there for 1.5 years while officially waiting for a visa and secretly hoping I’d never need it because by the time it came around Apple would have accepted remote work and I could just stay. Then in 2022 I had to move to keep my job and I have been trying to find a way back since then. So I guess both were there from the beginning?
Show threadHelge HeßSep 21, 2024
@cocoafrog @grork Didn't you know from the beginning that this was a US job? How could you have hoped for not having to be in the US for that? That part feels a little weird to me, it's not like Apple has ever been ambiguous here.
Show threadJoachimSep 22, 2024

@helge @grork I feel like I explained that in the the prev two messages? Yes, I knew this was officially a US position and only parked in Germany for the first year.

But it was also shortly after the pandemic and everyone was working remotely, including at Apple. When I joined only half my team was in Cupertino, the other half was distributed across various locations in the US and Europe.

So I had hoped that Apple’s leadership would realize that this is completely fine and just let us be.

Show threadJoachim

@helge @grork also, I know people who made this work before the pandemic (moved to the US temporarily and then came back to Germany and work remotely for Apple). So I hoped it would become easier to do this. Instead Apple has become extremely restrictive about these kinds of models to the point they are virtually non-existent.

It’s now much *harder* to work remotely for Apple than before the pandemic.

Sep 22, 2024 at 2:43amWeb
Show threadJoachimSep 22, 2024

@helge @grork lastly, I’ve worked for companies with partial WFH-agreements before.

The last one before Apple was Yelp. There I managed to get an agreement to work only two days per week in the office and three from home. It took quite a bit of negotiating to get to that point before the pandemic. But shortly after the pandemic started Yelp transitioned to „work wherever you like (and we have payroll)“ to the best of my knowledge. I had simply hoped that Apple would make a similar transition.